


None of us are who we used to be.

by jujubiest



Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: Extremely vague allusions to a rape that occurred in canon, F/M, Nick's perspective, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 20:11:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11699073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jujubiest/pseuds/jujubiest
Summary: Nick Burkhardt reflects on the two most important women in his life, and the confusion, pain, regret, and guilt that binds him to both of them equally, though in different ways.





	None of us are who we used to be.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not a fan of one of the ships depicted here, but this is Nick reflecting on his life, not me endorsing either relationship as healthy or desirable.

He loves two women–or thinks he does–but telling the difference between love and obligation was never his strong suit. One carried his child and seems to always want him close. At first to protect her from demons of her own making, of which there were many. Later, to protect her from herself…or the constant fear of the self she was once, and is afraid she could become again.

The other had loved him for seven years, had been patient and giving and unfailingly kind. She had forgiven him so many lies, and refused to leave even when it would have been easier, safer for her, to say goodbye. She had served wine to his friends over grisly crime scene photos, dug into dusty books full of horrors and looked for the beauty, cleaned glass and blood off their floors over and over, smiled and said “tomorrow will be better.” She fought so hard for him, for  _them_ , and in the end paid a price no one could have predicted.

(He thinks he should have been able to see it coming.)

He owes her his life, and then some. He’s lost count of the times she has come to his rescue. He couldn’t save her, can never _thank_ her, and maybe that’s all love is: a debt you can never afford to repay.

He searches for traces of the women he knew in the faces before him, looks for cold contempt and finds a timid warmth that he isn't sure he can trust.

(He almost does anyway.)

Looks for familiar sweetness and draws a blank instead, a strange, hard shell that refuses to crack.

Until it does.

There are traces, faint as a decades-old scar. There’s the villain of old nightmares in the quirk of her brow, the slow mischievous slide of her smile.

There’s a cherished memory in the way her eyes light with possibility when she opens a book, or in the way her voice shapes itself around his name like that one word is something urgent, important.

He holds onto those quiet echoes of who they once were to him, for the moments when they feel so strange that he’s sure he doesn’t know either of them at all. Sometimes it’s as though they are different people wearing cruelly familiar masks.

This love--obligation, grief, regret--tears at him, twists him into knots until he doesn't know how to feel. But he doesn't dare pull too hard at the strings; what they have now is so fragile. One wrong tug could disintegrate the bonds between them, completely and forever.

(The bonds themselves are nothing he feels the need to escape. It's the nature of them he finds confusing.)

One needed him, and he wasn’t there. He deserted her. One had no right to need him after all she'd done, but she had, and he'd done his best not to repeat the mistakes he made with the first.

(He wonders if there's resentment there. He knows he would hate them both if he were her.)

Now the one he should have been there for doesn’t need him at all, but he can’t quite let go of her. Can’t quite convince himself he shouldn’t be at her side. When he walks away from one he feels his nerves start to fray. When the other calls his name he runs to her without a thought.

(He lives in terror of the day these two intrinsic drives are placed in opposition to one another. He’s already tearing himself apart enough without help.)

He both shudders away and can’t help but be drawn in by them both, always afraid of the way they make him feel…always wondering where they’ve gone, and dreading–hoping for–the day they return.

(Sometimes he thinks they never will. Sometimes, he thinks he killed them both.)


End file.
